Dont Drink the Water: Lyme Disease Lurks Under the Eightball

Angry passion and visual high energy define this extraordinary muckraking documentary. The anger and rage that ignite it stem from the puzzling illness that overtakes Lori Hall-Steele, sister of Timothy Grey, who co-directed the film with Breanne Russell. At first, the diagnosis would seem to be chronic fatigue, but the symptoms (muscle failure, paralysis) begin to wildly contradict each other, alternately suggesting lupus, Lou Gherig and Lyme disease. Hall-Steele’s doctors mask their cluelessness in smug tones; one even tells her, “Everybody dies.” More infuriating are the indifference and outright hostility of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality when Grey discovers a freakish outbreak of identical illness in the area, one that aligns with the high degree of toxins in the local well water. This would be powerful, galling stuff in itself, but instead of limiting Under the Eightball to one woman’s plight, Grey and Russell instead confront the history of Lyme disease and its origins in the U.S. government’s decades of medical experiments (using captured Nazi and Japanese scientists) to develop biological warfare. These experiments were practiced on all of us, Grey and Russell assert, and they make a persuasive case. What might have been dull charts and talking heads are instead clever reenactments and quick cuts, with key words and footnotes superimposed in well-chosen graphics. A wealth of information is thereby processed in kinetic leaps, yet we are never lost. Grey and his sister were born and raised in Flint, Michigan, which makes it tempting to reference Flint’s other native documentarian, Michael Moore, with whom they share a crusading ferocity. Such glib comparisons burn away fast, however: The heartbreak that informs the universal reach of Under the Eightball is uniquely personal. (Sunset 5)

Get the Weekly Newsletter

Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.